Really excellent interview and useful insight into how policymaking is working in this administration. I'll share this with students I mentor for an understanding of how power translates beyond strict titles.
(note - your "Dunbar Number" hyperlink goes to the October 22nd export controls you also linked previously)
I am disappointed that Statecraft sees fit to give friendly interviews to people who voluntarily worked for the Trump administration.
I'm sure Dean Ball is a smart and knowledgeable guy who has good ideas about AI policy. But he made a deal with the devil: he went to work for a Nazi gang that is right now engaged in mass kidnappings of innocent people and military occupations of American cities, and systematically working to destroy everything good about America and to undermine all liberal and humane values, including those that have been essential to the progress humanity has enjoyed over the past 200 years.
No such person should be treated as a respectable member of the progress community: they are enemies of human flourishing and of the human future. The lack of perspective here, the rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic, is shameful.
Trump is an authoritarian who breaks a lot of laws, proudly expresses a desire to illegally retake office in 2028 and shut down media critical of him, and who courts support from the far-right and white supremacists. But Trump himself is not a Nazi or fascist, and I think the hyperbole coming from the left helps explain why the Democrats lost the election.
They lost in a free and fair election against the worst Republican presidential candidate I've ever seen. Twice. TWICE! The second time, he was a convicted felon that a previous Republican presidential candidate voted to impeach! The soul-searching on that, the repentance, and the smart new strategies should've been brewing in 2017, but all we got was Biden and Kamala. The hyperbole continued, and the dems remained out-of-touch. The 2024 election results prove it. Surveys show Republicans are actually more trusted than Democrats! That's wild! How is that possible, and what are Democrats doing about it?
Sure, it is a big problem that Trump can tell 10 lies before breakfast and much of the population simply believes him. "Hm, well he may have been convicted repeatedly in court, but he says it's all witch hunts so he must be innocent!" It's not fair, but you have to play the hand you're dealt. [edit: and I don't actually think Trump's word alone is the key factor; it's the solidarity. You'd think the Left would be the ones who do solidarity, but when Trump says something it's gospel, so a huge media ecosystem immediately suggests the prosecutions are illegitimate because Trump said so.]
Yet here you are suggesting the same tired progressive game plan of "deplatforming a nazi collaborator". I don't know anything about this guy other than that he seems like a Republican. So I don't know if Statecraft's friendliness is warranted, but at least it encourages the interviewee to be honest rather than guarded, and that's a good thing for information-gathering. Statecraft is correct that there is value in learning from the various ways that the White House acts quickly and effectively. Consider this passage:
> There are good-hearted Democrats who will be like, “Yeah, that sounds like a problem for humanity.” But the actual way that the Democratic party works is that, if you want to get the Democratic Party to be supportive of catastrophic risk things, you’ve got to have a story about why biorisk is a problem for the teachers unions, the ACLU, the school bus drivers union, and all the other various constituencies that — Holy Roman Empire-like — make up the Democratic party.
My impression is that this IS sort of how the Biden WH operated (not union-centric in particular, but trying too hard to help out its interest groups), and it wasn't the right approach. Dems can learn something about efficiency from the Trump WH, so I think they should.
Really excellent interview and useful insight into how policymaking is working in this administration. I'll share this with students I mentor for an understanding of how power translates beyond strict titles.
(note - your "Dunbar Number" hyperlink goes to the October 22nd export controls you also linked previously)
Super valuable. Appreciate the insights - both procedural and subject matter - in this discussion
I am disappointed that Statecraft sees fit to give friendly interviews to people who voluntarily worked for the Trump administration.
I'm sure Dean Ball is a smart and knowledgeable guy who has good ideas about AI policy. But he made a deal with the devil: he went to work for a Nazi gang that is right now engaged in mass kidnappings of innocent people and military occupations of American cities, and systematically working to destroy everything good about America and to undermine all liberal and humane values, including those that have been essential to the progress humanity has enjoyed over the past 200 years.
No such person should be treated as a respectable member of the progress community: they are enemies of human flourishing and of the human future. The lack of perspective here, the rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic, is shameful.
Dear hand-wringer,
A majority of the voters gave Trump a thumbs up.
You do not control anything to exclude people from anymore.
The faster you understand this, the better for you.
Furthermore, let me inform you that young people are even more pro Trump
than the older generations. You are no longer on the 'right side of history'
including with talented, smart and ambitious people.
If this upsets you, I suggest BlueSky.
Regards
Trump is an authoritarian who breaks a lot of laws, proudly expresses a desire to illegally retake office in 2028 and shut down media critical of him, and who courts support from the far-right and white supremacists. But Trump himself is not a Nazi or fascist, and I think the hyperbole coming from the left helps explain why the Democrats lost the election.
They lost in a free and fair election against the worst Republican presidential candidate I've ever seen. Twice. TWICE! The second time, he was a convicted felon that a previous Republican presidential candidate voted to impeach! The soul-searching on that, the repentance, and the smart new strategies should've been brewing in 2017, but all we got was Biden and Kamala. The hyperbole continued, and the dems remained out-of-touch. The 2024 election results prove it. Surveys show Republicans are actually more trusted than Democrats! That's wild! How is that possible, and what are Democrats doing about it?
Sure, it is a big problem that Trump can tell 10 lies before breakfast and much of the population simply believes him. "Hm, well he may have been convicted repeatedly in court, but he says it's all witch hunts so he must be innocent!" It's not fair, but you have to play the hand you're dealt. [edit: and I don't actually think Trump's word alone is the key factor; it's the solidarity. You'd think the Left would be the ones who do solidarity, but when Trump says something it's gospel, so a huge media ecosystem immediately suggests the prosecutions are illegitimate because Trump said so.]
Yet here you are suggesting the same tired progressive game plan of "deplatforming a nazi collaborator". I don't know anything about this guy other than that he seems like a Republican. So I don't know if Statecraft's friendliness is warranted, but at least it encourages the interviewee to be honest rather than guarded, and that's a good thing for information-gathering. Statecraft is correct that there is value in learning from the various ways that the White House acts quickly and effectively. Consider this passage:
> There are good-hearted Democrats who will be like, “Yeah, that sounds like a problem for humanity.” But the actual way that the Democratic party works is that, if you want to get the Democratic Party to be supportive of catastrophic risk things, you’ve got to have a story about why biorisk is a problem for the teachers unions, the ACLU, the school bus drivers union, and all the other various constituencies that — Holy Roman Empire-like — make up the Democratic party.
My impression is that this IS sort of how the Biden WH operated (not union-centric in particular, but trying too hard to help out its interest groups), and it wasn't the right approach. Dems can learn something about efficiency from the Trump WH, so I think they should.
Ahhghh! I can't believe he drops a cryptic paragraph about the deep state and there are no followup questions to figure out what he's talking about!